Search for due dates in the past (e.g. due in the last week)

honel says:

Firstly, let me say that RTM rocks - I use it every day for work and personal stuff and I love having the Netvibes module on my windows desktop

It would be very very useful to have an operator to create smart lists for overdue items. Presently they are all bunched together - I'd like to be able to see what was due yesterday and last week. This would make it far quicker to identify and edit the tasks that have just fallen overdue, without losing them in one large pile together with tasks I've neglected for weeks. OK, I could just get everything done on time and avoid the problem, but sadly I don't see that happening any time soon...please help me!

Posted at 11:02pm on April 15, 2007

emily(Remember The Milk) says:

honel, thanks for your feedback! Unfortunately it's not currently possible to search by due date with negative time periods, but it's something that we may be able to look at.

Posted 9 years ago

rhgaspar says:

Have you made any progress in determining if and when this function is available? I too believe it to be a very powerful feature if its available.

Posted 8 years ago

ranbarton says:

How about searches like the following:

dueWithin:"1 week of today" AND dueBefore:tomorrow

Is that sort of what you are looking for? That flags just the stuff that's recently overdue for me.

Posted 8 years ago

bzpilman says:

Interesting, ran, but back when I tried it, the dueWithin search operator didn't seem to catch negative due dates, only positive ones. Might test again to see if it works now..

Posted 8 years ago

finny388 says:

I too would like to save a search that tells me what tasks are overdue by a week or less to tell me what I have recently overlooked.

Is this possible yet? I tried:

dueWithin:"1 week of today" AND dueBefore:tomorrow"

but it returned nothing though I know there are overdue tasks less than a week old.

Yup, dueWithin is a future-only search (addedWithin and completedWithin are past-only). I don't think any of the search operators currently allow you to search for overdue by less than a week unfortunately, as we'd need to have searching due dates with negative time periods (something like "due within minus one week" or "due in the last week").

Posted 8 years ago

nah.why says:

this worked for me:

dueWithin:"1 day of 18 oct 2008"

today, 20 oct 2008. It's a fixed date, so you can put it in a smart list but you'd have to edit the list every day.

Posted 8 years ago

nguyen.dinh.nguyen says:

I read this tip from
http://www.jeffstanden.com/blog/2007/12/30/remember-the-milk-1-month-review-tips/
and modify it a little bit.
If you put "dueBefore:today", that will return all the tasks that are overdue. Tested!
As of with the reference link, it suggested "dueBefore:tomorrow" to return overdue tasks and due-today tasks.

i've been using the technique i posted above for quite some time and it works quite well, but it's not automatic.

today is "25 apr 2009" and i want to see things that were due in the last week, so i specify:

dueWithin:"7 days of 18 Apr 2009"

Note that 18 Apr is 7 days in the past.

This does exactly what i want. I Just have to increment the 18 Apr by one day every day to keep it "relative";

What i do to make this easier on myself is to say:

dueWithin:"20 days of 15 Apr 2009"

This gets me all the tasks due in the last 10 days, plus all the tasks due in the next 10 days. But i can sort by due date and the overdue task will be at the top.

Then, i only have to update the 15 Apr date every 10 days or so to keep up with the current time. It's a littler easier.

I find it tricky to see what this is doing, conceptually, so i'll state it again: Since due date search always only looks forward in time, i specify a date in the PAST and ask for due dates after that date, which can include today.

Posted 7 years ago

brucehartley says:

I'm a big fan of RTM, but am very confused that this is not a standard feature. It seems from above that I am not able to create a simple smart list that shows me tasks due yesterday and today. Seems like a fairly common thing....at the end of the day I want a quick view of what didn't get done (or didn't mark as complete) today, and what's coming tomorrow. would love to see this ability.

Posted 7 years ago

raymond.bergmark says:

That you can do, check out at the end of the day what you have still left on your task list and what's up tomorrow.

Unfortunately, you can't do the same thing early the next day, check what's left from yesterday and due today.

What's missing in RTM is the support for "yesterday", that would help a lot (hint to Emily ;-)

Posted 7 years ago

brucehartley says:

well, unfortunately, my day often ends after midnight so that solution doesn't work! listen up Emily ;-) thanks

Yes, I too wish there was a "yesterday" feature - it would be really cool! Until the feature is implemented, RTM cannot invite Sir Paul McCartney to use the software. :-( i.e. "Yesterday" one of the Beatles classics could not have been written with the help of RTM which is a great shame. Having said that I don't advocate RTM introducing an "Eight Days a Week" feature :-)

Posted 7 years ago

shekala says:

Can't agree more - the ability to search using negative values is essential and a common feature in most other similar programs. PLEASE add this feature asap. This thread goes back years, so really hoping someone at RTM starts to pay attention to what appears to be an oft requested feature.

Posted 5 years ago

codejak says:

I was referred to this post by the team after recommending a feature recommended here (in general terms for any task management system): http://skornyakov.info/2011/12/overcoming-negative-motivation-todo/

It's about giving the user an overview of tasks finished in order to give a sense of accomplishment (instead of beating oneself up about the never-shrinking list of tasks still ahead).

So I guess what would be nice (while, admittedly, not essential for the core process of managing your tasks) would be a status feature (e.g., as an extra box on the right hand side of the task list) that would let the user know, how many task with which total amount of planned time he/she has finished on the current day and maybe in the current week. This could be extended to something like average tasks finished per day over longer periods togive a frame of reference.

This could basically serve as both a motivator (hey, you've [not] gotten stuff done today) and a performance measurement tool.

IMHO, the feature described above would build on top of the suggested extension of the search function to negative due dates. That function alone wouldn't accomplish what I described, though (since a user would basically still have to build his own list and evaluate manually).

Posted 4 years ago

erich.t.wade says:

I, too, would like this feature. The ability to have a smart list showing overdue items from the last week only would be a huge boon.

nah.why, your solution looks like the best way to handle it for now. Thank you. :)

Posted 4 years ago

ornthalas says:

Please, I would love this feature too.

I use lists for important and urgent things, and being able to augment the urgency as tasks get late, it would add a tremendous value to the smart lists.

And it doesn't seem soooo hard to develop!

Posted 1 year ago

scotiaking says:

I would love this as well. Thought it was something I could do with advanced query language.

Sad to learn it was first suggested by someone 9 years ago :)

Posted 6 months ago

sapanshah83 says:

I would love this feature too

Posted 6 months ago

tismey says:

I'd also like to be able to do this, but more specifically with Start dates. I'd like to have a 'Recently Started' list that just brings back items that Started in the last 2 weeks. StartBefore:Today brings back too many results for that Smart List to be useful for me.